


In Dreams We Will Meet Again

by Altenprano



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Caleb needs a hug, I started speculating about caleb's mom and caleb and then this happened, mentions of Trent, still not over ep18 in case you can't tell, this is a bit angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 10:16:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14692122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Altenprano/pseuds/Altenprano
Summary: Sometimes, when Caleb sleeps, there are no nightmares. Sometimes, Caleb dreams, though when he dreams, he sees his mother.





	In Dreams We Will Meet Again

Sometimes, he dreams.

He dreams he was back home, in Blumenthal.

It is spring—his mother’s favorite time of year—and he is sitting in the small garden plot adjacent to his family’s cottage. His mother is with him, her auburn hair tucked under a kerchief as she tends the plants that grow there. Rosemary, mint and mallow plants flourish under his mother’s attention, and while she is no healer, she knows enough about plants and has always had a gift (or so said her mother) for making them grow.

He knows the name of every plant that grows in that garden, and for the most part, he can recall their uses. Mint is for settling upset stomachs, soothing hay fever, or helping nursing mothers, while mallow is good for dressing wounds, or soothing sore throats, or helping with coughs. Rosemary isn’t as useful, but that didn’t keep him from enjoying the heady scent that the leaves gave off, or the way it added flavor to the bread his mother baked for special occasions.

His mother often smelled of rosemary. He knows this was because she sleeps with a small bundle beneath her pillow, tied with a piece of twine, and sometimes carries a sprig tucked into the bodice of her work dress.

In his dream, he can smell the rosemary above all the other plants in his mother’s garden, and it comforts him, helps him to feel more at peace.

He hesitates to speak, knowing his mother often works in silence—she has to be able to hear the plants, she always said—but he does not want to startle her.

Sometimes, she notices him before he has the chance to speak, and he watches as she sets her basket and brushes the dirt off her hands and onto her apron, all the while watching him closely. Her eyes are sadder than he remembers, as if she has foreseen some great misfortune from her son, but the smile of her face is one of pride.

“My Caleb,” she says, going to embrace him, enveloping him in a warm cocoon that smells of rosemary and newly-turned dirt. “You’ve grown taller since I last saw you.”

He has grown.

In his dreams, he is his full height, no longer the short-for-his age teenager that would retreat into his mother’s garden to read. His hair is no longer the wild mass of curls his mother would try to tame on festival days, and his eyes he knows hold a weariness that he hasn’t found the words for. His hands are somewhere between soft and work-worn—he doesn’t quite have a name for it—and, like his mother’s, they are flecked with dirt.

His mother pulls away for a moment to pluck a purple mallow flower from a nearby plant, and lovingly, she tucks it behind his ear. She holds him at arm’s length, studying his changed features, and admiring her handiwork. “Something’s troubling you, little one. What is it?”

He cannot remember the last time he heard his mother call him “little one,” though he knows it was something she only called him when he was small, before he was old enough to object to the endearment. Now, he does not protest its use, he only wishes he could find the words to tell his mother what he has done.

Forgive me mother, he wants to say, but doesn’t. Something keeps from asking her forgiveness, perhaps because he does not deserve it, after all he has done.

He knows what troubles him, but there is no fixing that. Unless his mother is able to alter the fabric of time in such a way that Trent Ikithon never happened, perhaps so that his acceptance into the Solstryce Academy never happened, then all would be well, but, even if she were able, he knows he would not ask that of her.

“You are my son, and I will always be proud of you,” she says, unprompted, and presses his hands in hers, squeezing tight, as if to impart a blessing upon him. “You will always have my forgiveness, no matter what.”

No.

He wants to pull away; suddenly, he cannot stand to touch her and the smell of rosemary is stifling. He wants to tell her what he’s done, so that she will see he is not deserving of forgiveness, not after what he did to her and his father.

He remembers what Nott said, that it was not his fault, but he will, until the end of creation, shoulder the blame.

Trent is an evil man, and Caleb hates him for his deceptions, but Caleb hates himself much more for being so blind as to believe in the man who told him that he would make his mother proud.

_Mother forgive me. Mother, please forgive me._

He hates himself for succumbing to the will of another, and allowing his ability—an ability his mother always said was given to him so that he may do good in the world—to be used for such evil acts. Maybe the first few men he was brought were criminals, traitors who sought to overthrow the Empire, or aid the armies of Xhorhas in their quest to break up the Dwendalian Empire, and thus they deserved the end they met, but his parents? How had he allowed his mind to be twisted against his parents, how was it that is loyalty was bought with the promise of making his parents proud?

He doesn’t have his mother’s gift.

Her gift is life.

Whether it through her uncanny understanding of plants, or the ways she knows to use plants to soothe aches and treat fevers, she has only ever brought life into the world. She is no healer, but she grows what the village’s healer needed, and she knows how to tend to crops so they give a good yield. She brings light and life wherever she goes, and that is her gift.

His gift is death.

Fire is light, and warmth, but he has never known it that way. He has only learned to use his gift to kill and destroy, and nothing accomplishes that more quickly than fire. He has seen how quickly a human body succumbs to flames, and much quicker still, the dry wooden beams of his family’s cottage. He knows that his fire is more a danger than his mother’s plants would ever be, and that he only brings sorrow and destruction.  

He does not see how his ability was given to him so that he could do good in the world. What good is fire, when all fire does is consume and destroy? Fire is greedy and wrathful, a beast he can speak the language of, but not one he can control.

He knows he can rely on his fire, that his fire will always protect him, but it will only protect him, not his mother, not his father, and he is afraid that one day, it will cease to protect even him, and he will be the one consumed by the fire, destroyed by his own gift.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed that.   
> I don't usually write in 3rd person present so this was an adventure for me, and I hope you enjoyed it as well.   
> Please let me know what you think, and if you'd like to see more of this kind of stuff.


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